Episode 025

– The first official day of summer arrived yesterday; warm temps, sun, pool time and nice calm nights; my favorite time of the year. Just keep those cold fronts away and let the freezing rain storms be on hold for a few months.

News – Story 1: T-Mobile Lets 1 million test drive an iPhone 5S on their network

– T-Mobile has been shaking up the mobile carrier landscape; they are working with Apple to provide a 7 day free trial of their service; a $750 hold on a credit card is required; any damage to the trial iPhone 5S will be credit card dinged, too; so far, well over 12,000 have signed up; tempting for anyone that’s curious about trying out their coverage; most carriers have a 14 day or 30 day return policy, although some do require you pay for any service use like calls, texts and data; I’d be curious to see how their subscriber numbers are after they’ve reached the 1 million mark.
– Link to article: T-Mobile iPhone 5s 7 day test drive has over 12k takers

News – Story 2: Amazon dives into the smartphone pool with Fire Phone

– another Android phone that’s a decent phone, but the critics are pretty much “meh” on this one; Amazon Prime users get unlimited music listening, but that applies to every Prime customer, not just those that by the new Fire Phone; unlimited Amazon Cloud storage for photos is a plus; 5 cameras captures a 3D like view; runs Fire OS 3.5, which is a modified version of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean; no Google Play store, which could be a deal breaker for anyone that’s switching from a regular Android phone; no Bluetooth LE, which means limited support for wearable devices like Fitbit and other connected gear; could be a good phone after a few updates.
– Link to article: Amazon Fire Phone

News – Story 3: Six California’s – proposal to split the Golden State into 6 separate states

– there is a proposed ballot initiative that supporters of splitting Calif into 6 states; northern Calif has been the forgotten step child over the years and they have long proposed splitting into a new state called Jackson; the 5 other states are: South California, West California, Silicon Valley, Central California and North California; the complications that this could bring are just mind boggling; changes to federal laws, new stars on the flag, migrating current state laws into their respective states; budgets assigned, highway funding; I get that some that live in less populated areas feel shut out and orphaned; but will creating 5 new states be the right answer?; as a California native, I don’t think I can get behind this. Maybe split the state into Jackson and the rest stays California.
– Link to article: Six Californias – Split the state into 6 states

RANT: Single apps that did multiple things, now splitting into multiple apps

– Foursquare is now search only; they split the checkin function off to a new app called Swarm; Path took their messaging part out of their main app and moved it to Path Talk; Facebook split off it’s messaging app, as well as having a separate photo app; this is confusing to me; I’ve been using Swarm for checkins and I admit to missing the integrated functions that Foursquare had; Path is a nice social media app on a smaller scale; perhaps they want to branch out and compete with these Snapchat and Yo apps that only keep messages around for a day; I don’t quite get what they are trying to accomplish by off loading functions to a separate app.

SHAMELESS PLUG: My wife and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary

– Saturday was 6 years since we married; and it was also 13 years since our first encounter; we met at a friend’s kegger house party; she gave me her number, we went on a date a few days later; except for a break up in late 2002/early 2003, we’ve been together since; rough times and good times; lots of travel; home remodel projects; we work good together 92% of the time.